Corvus
by Dr. Q. Uirk
Summary: Not all crows gorge heavily on carrion, rather some species are capable hunters and free of the forced subsistence of death. Although to do away with carrion's presence in their diets completely is a folly, and one cannot say that the bird doesn't enjoy feeding on it. Zevran has to decide what kind of Crow he'll be. This a collection of works that waxes poetic about Zevran.
1. The Gift

Fatalism would dog him until the day he died. And that was thanks to the Crows. Although Zevran had never considered the Crows an enslaver, until they had made him dance, flutter, and flap until his daggers had ended up in Rinna's heart and he had crashed into the bars of his wide and elaborate cage. And he knew that dead birds at the bottom of cages were removed from them. In death, his body would be allowed a final freedom to fly away. The irony that leaving the cage required the sacrifice of his life was too bitter to swallow without a grin to sweeten it. But in seeking death, the true irony was that he accidentally found a way to have both freedom and life – not stolen with greedy guilt-numbed fingers (Life was a luxury. It was something he had never been meant to have, so like the rest of the elves, he took it from the maws of a society of overabundance) but earned through redemption.

In truth, Zevran had been free once before, but poverty had shackles of its own, and, objectively, living like that was wasn't truly living. He didn't object to it, he was not angered by the injustices of being poor and elvish; his life had happened, but he had always found ways, small ways to take back the narrative from fatalism's fingers and to weave in sections of his own.

When he had been little he had had gloves. They were beautiful works of soft gray leather, and by some small kindness, he had been given them. He remembered staring down at them - his volumous blond hair lank with soil and falling unkemptly into his eyes – and tracing the simple blue but elegant swirling stitching of a bow knocked with an arrow as though it were inlaid with precious stones. The voice of the, rather pretty, whore in front of him soothed into an unfocused mosaic of different shades of earthy-toned brown and lulled words.

"This is your inheritance, Zevran," she said, and as he looked up at her he knew that she was giving him a moment of tenderness that was neither lie nor truth but said many things in between.

"Thank you," he said in a voice that wasn't deep and sultry, but still with the pure resonance of childhood and hesitance.

Zevran's brown eyes, too big for his slight face, searched hers openly, and unsure of how to convey the proper gratitude for such an allowance of such a magnitude hugged her.

She held him firmly and rubbed his back roughly without any conviction of love, then sent him on his way.

When he took them out from his chest of things and wore them, although circumstances had not changed, he could be something else – last of the Elvhenan. Never again would he submit. His small hands, although not formed to full capability and yet untempered by blood, were particular with his gloves so that they would not wear, or crease, or stain with grease. He laid them apart from the rest of his things because they were something he'd never had before: something to be prized.

When his master took it – "What are these? Gloves? Where did you steal them from?" "I didn't." "Don't you _lie_ to me, Zevran." – he hadn't mourned the loss. Although it had been great, it was too inevitable that he'd be caught, that life would take as it would give.

So when he told her that he had never been given a gift before, he, like the woman that had given him his gloves, hadn't completely lied; her gift was, to him, the same as his mother's – the first gift he'd ever been given and something to be taken care of. But these ones, unlike the first pair, he was sure would have permanence.


	2. In the Absence of Blood Gold Washes Anew

The sunlight poured from a shaft in the cathedral roof over the freshly bled bodies. It was a magnificent place to be so drunk with death. The warm hints in the beige stone were brought out by accents of gold that crusted the vaulted roof, floor, and statues with the very essence of the sublime, which shimmered into seemingly liquid pools that cast their glow as though inviting worshipers to drown in the chantry for salvation. A baptism. It was ruined by the corpses that were too garish and bright for such a solemn place. A carnival of murder splashed sneers across the faces of the holy set in marble bones, and vendor food, greasy and raw, littered the floor and poured from the undigested stomachs. People had gathered here had feasted on metal unitl they spit, had laughed bellows and shrieks that rang until the spirits of the Fade too had felt it and reached out with immutable hands to snatch the sound from their lips, they carried clamor as though on breeze inside these regal walls made by the chaotic hurrying of bodies grinding against the stone walls that penned in the festival crowd. They had eaten their fill. They were gorged. Blood dripped off of the ponds of gold at the feet of the statues, and cast the effect of Andraste's baptismal waters as false, and it was somehow less. It was an attractive tomb, nevertheless, Zevran thought. He did not plan to move the bodies.

He was the last of the waiters that had served the panic with a Burgandy piquette stained mouth, and he had yet been unsatisfied and had so lingered to see the destruction in the wake of the excitement of the aftermath. His dagger rasped dryly against the wall - where he dragged a clawed steadying hand against it - in the colossal silence as he approached on rickety, sticky feet. Zevran took off his mask, and let the black hood proclaim him as brother of the inverted church. His chin tilted up to the magnificent window that threw sun into the room without a filter and over him. He climbed the steps to the dais alter silently as a stumbling drunk with his sodden feet encased in layers of lead, and with a clatter laid his dagger across the the gold plated podium. The blade was cleansed by the deep pages of the holy book. He fell to his knees with a ringing cacophony that, too, eventually faded into silence and began to pray. The audience was silent to his personal reverie. He prayed for blood to stain him with sin no longer and murmured waterfalls of thanks for the mere allowance to be in the Antiva City Chantry from his sultry toned mouth with sincerity and reverence for a truth that he was not accustomed to fully speaking. He poured his words over the floors, the walls, the statues - and they filled the chantry to the vaulted ceiling.

All that glistened was gold, and Zevran was an idol bathed in it. Zevran Arainai glistened, like gold - and he was loathe not to remind people of this phenomena. His skin was dusted with shimmering flecks, his hair was a brilliant rare tint of blond, and his eyes a deep mulled amber of precious liquid rather than metal. It all flared in the fire light - where he preferred to be at such times at night - admirers keened over him.

Zevran kissed them with his swarthy lips, and they swooned underneath him. There was one in particular of the flock that he liked - he had compared her meticulously against a man (who he could see little of in the darkness except for olived skin, a wide wide mouth, and his voice in the daylight when they would play with each other in hopes for free chances - like tonight - that would bring their flirtations to fruition). But Zevran was sure that Talisen would present him with other chances; he did not hold grudges.

* * *

Her breast heaved below him, and Zevran though it was one of the best qualities about her as he dipped back down to drink. Her mouth earned her no points for her snide comments about him, outside of this room, being cocked up and insufferable as they came, but Zevran never thought that that was important, especially not how it betrayed her now with how coiling languished breaths that steamed against his skin that were pushed free of her lungs.

"You're abhorrent, Zevran," she said.

She was wrapped up in his arms, and there was a fireplace crackling in his open Tevinter-syle chambers. The night pressed in damply on the skin, and he sweated her like a fever in his thick arms wrapped against her bosom so that it spilled over them with the sheets caught tangled around her waist and hips, like a very old toga.

"I am absolutely despicable, but you are a beautiful creature that untames my flesh into indecent composure; I was lucky to have left with my honor the way you looked at me this evening," Zevran smirked.

Her arm pulled free of his grasp, and a playful finger hooked inside the loop of his gold hoop that dripped diamonds down the side of his jaw.

"What honor? You're a pig, but you can fuck."

Her mouth pressed over his as he began to laugh at her through opened amber eyes that cut in the firelight, and her dainty teeth caught his bottom lip sharply in response.

"Should we call for wine, then, while I still like you tonight?"

"I'm a glutton, but I feel it will make me sick."


End file.
